XP restarting at load screen

My parents have a dell 2350. It's about 6-7 years old now and it's starting to experience some problems. I do not wish to toss it because I do want them to be able to have a computer, they only use it to check email and play solitare really.

So the problem that is occuring is a Disk Read Error. Every time you try to turn the computer on it gives you this error after you get the dell screen. What it says exactly is.. "A disk read error has occure, press cntrl+alt+delete to restart". I honestly have no idea what to do. The hard drive is about 4 years old. I'm guessing it could just be dead, but before I go out and buy a new HDD i want to know if there is anything I can do to get it to work. At least for a short time.

Thanks in advanced guys.

Hi, recently my computer has been restarting over and over. For the past weeks every now and then it would not recognize my HDD's and would be restarted. However, it now can see the HDD's and will boot up. But when I get to the XP loading screen it starts to load and then restarts. It will do this over and over, and because of such I am unable to get on to my computer.

I have tried getting into safe mode but the same thing happens. Also I have tried to repair windows XP with a friends CD but when it gets to the select partition to repair, it is unable to find any HDD with windows XP.

I was pretty stupid when I had built this computer I used my older smaller HDD to install XP on. So the HDD is about 6 years old.

Does any one have any ideas on how I can fix this problem? I'm really hoping that the HDD isn't dead, because I can't even find my XP cd.